Environmental and Parental Influences on Age at Maturity in Sockeye Salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) from the Fraser River, British Columbia

Abstract

Commercial fisheries possess the potential for applying strong selection on size or age at maturity in the populations they exploit. It is therefore important to know the extent to which these traits are inherited. We examined regressions of the mean age at maturity of cohorts of offspring on the mean ages of the female and male spawners which produced them for four populations of sockeye salmon (Oncorhynchus nerka) from the Fraser River, British Columbia. Unlike previous researchers, we found that neither genetic nor maternal effects are important, relative to environmental variables, in influencing year-to-year variation in age at maturity in these stocks. The differences between our findings and earlier ones are due to a longer data series and more complete population statistics than were available previously. We further analyzed the age structure of the Adams River population, which has a cyclic pattern of abundance. Fluctuating population density appeared to account for variation in age structure among cycle years in the Adams stock. We concluded that serious concerns about the long-term effects of size-selective fishing on mean age at maturity are probably not warranted for Fraser River sockeye.